Still No Honor Among Thieves

(Mayor Rahm and Governor Kylo Rauner pictured here in happier 

days, just before The Bad Thing Happened)

Longtime readers might remember that before I moved to Central Illinois, I lived in Chicago for +25 years.  While I lived there, I came to know the culture and folkways and deep political weirdness of its charming and exotic people very well and wrote about it often.  So as I watched Mayor Rahm cozy up with his old pal, hedge-fund billionaire and ambulatory Koch Brothers playbook, Bruce Rauner, it was clear to me that Mayor Rahm thought that the rules of political gravity in Illinois somehow still functioned as they did during the high cotton days of Mare Daley -- back when Da Mare operated as a virtual king with a reach that extended all the way to Springfield and who dispensed many different denominations of favors and collected many forms of tributes and loyalties. 

The political currency this system generated was called "clout" -- it was highly fungible and had many uses, not the least of which was a hedge against some unfortunate day when mud was gettin' splashed around, because with enough clout inna bank ain't none'a dat mud gonna splash on da Man on Five at Ciddy Hall.

So having scorched and spent his way to the pinnacle of power in Illinois, when Rahm's fortunes suddenly reversed themselves, it seems clear to me that he expected the rules of the game to remain as they were under Richard the 1st and Richard the 2nd.  One hunkers down, closes ranks and puts up the Clout Signal and eventually some escape plan will emerge from the collective cunning of all the people who are beholden to Hizzoner.

But Mayor Rahm has no ranks to close, no Unsullied army and, as such, no clout.   This goes back to the fact that, as friend-of-this-humble-blog, Rick Perlstein, documented to a fare-thee-well in the New Yorker ("The Sudden But Well-Deserved Fall of Rahm Emanuel") Rahm built his very successful career on 1) glomming on to rich people and hitting them up for money, and 2) bullying and berating everyone else into moving ever further rightward:

But return to Washington in the early nineteen-nineties, when a grateful Clinton awarded his young charge a prominent White House role. There, Emanuel’s prodigious energy, along with his contempt for what he called “liberal theology,” rocketed him higher and higher into the Clinton stratosphere. “He gets things done,” Clinton’s chief of staff, Erskine Bowles, enthused late in 1996, when Emanuel usurped George Stephanopoulos as senior adviser for policy and strategy. Among his special projects was helping to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement and the 1994 crime bill. He also tried to push Clinton to the right on immigration, advising the President, in a memo in November, 1996, to work to “claim and achieve record deportations of criminal aliens.” These all, in the fullness of time, turned out to be mistakes.

As far as my own unscientific assay of his administration goes, the peons below him -- the tens of thousands of working stiffs who make the gears of government go round and round -- would be just as happy to see him sail past their window on his way down to a abrupt and splatty interlude with LaSalle Street.

And as for the Men of Power like Governor Hedgefund whose favor Rahm so assiduously courted?

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Brown: Rauner endorses recall bill; 'very disappointed' in Rahm

Fresh from a Saharan Desert holiday where he says he and his family rode camels and slept in tents, Gov. Bruce Rauner did nothing Monday to quell the shifting sands beneath Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Rauner told reporters he would sign a bill allowing Chicago voters to recall their mayor from office if it reaches his desk.

The governor also said he was “very disappointed” in Emanuel and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez over their handling of Chicago police misconduct cases.

Perhaps more important, Rauner reiterated that he will stand firm against providing increased financial assistance to Chicago Public Schools until Emanuel and Chicago Democrats help him achieve his legislative goals, even as he predicted that financial “disaster” at CPS is now only months away.

...

Ruh Roh.

You may already be familiar with the two unbreakable rules of Chicago politics which were famously codified by Ward Committeeman Bernard Neistein back when dinosaurs walked the Earth:

"Don't Make No Waves and Don't Back No Losers".

Well right at the moment, Mayor Rahm's thrashing is making a lot of waves and he sure as hell looks like a loser.

The Clout Club

Is getting some serious pushback.



I would love to see Rahmses driven from the throne.



And so would pretty much everyone I still know who works for the City of Chicago.

Chicago is the great engine that powers the state and much of the Midwest.  What happens there matters everywhere.

The Return of a Club Called Clout

Remember a few months ago when I brought to your attention a well-intentioned, infuriating train-wreck of a program called the Neighborhood Recovery Act?  The one into whose bottom tier I accidentally found myself tossed as low-level contract-employee placeholder and which, to my well-trained eyes, was clearly being managed from on-high by people who had no idea what they were doing?

...

From top to bottom, the problem with the NRI wasn't just that the program was a goddamn mess.

It was -- like many an IT project I slogged through back in the days of old -- depressingly clear from a mile away that it was wired to be a goddamn mess from the start.  The people at the top appeared to be sincere, but had no idea what they were doing.  The cost-controls were zilch.  The project plan was "throw a buncha stuff at it and hope it works out".  There were dozens of complex moving parts, all on different schedules, all run by different people, none of whom appeared to be talking to each other on a regular basis.  Staffing was a nightmare, with everything sub-sub-contracted out as far as possible to spread the money around.

And money was the thing.  

Money and deadlines.

Thanks to the the Great Recession, by 2010 social service organizations of all kinds had been decimated by massive, muscle-and-bone cuts to at all levels. and it was into that resource-starved environment that this a brand-new $55M grant arrived.

Ermahgerd!

New Money!

And deadlines. No concise objectives or well-defined outcomes, but lots and lots of deadlines each of which came with severe penalties.

So here's a pro tip for you kids out there:  When a project combines 1) no clear plan and no overall leader, 2) a high public profile and 3) lots of drop-dead dates...run for the exit as soon as you can plan your escape because

• The thing is doomed.  Doooomed I say.  And
• As sure as God made John Wesley Dean III, the first thing that will happen after the Big Project fails due to incompetent management is that management will go looking for scapegoats among the rank-and-file. And when that happens, you would do well to remember the wise words of Amarillo Slim: "If you’re at a poker table and you don’t see a sucker, it’s you.”

Well watch this space, because over the summer this story is going to become a Big Deal.

Why?

Three reasons.

First, a bipartisan legislative committee has taken up the matter.  Everyone on the committee can plainly see that something here is bent, and nobody wants to head into November with that stink on them:

...

“To me, what’s clear is we’ve only scratched the surface on how this total waste of taxpayer dollars happened,” said Sen. Jason Barickman, R-Champaign, co-chairman of a legislative panel that spent half the day Wednesday poring over a scathing February audit of Quinn’s program.

The bipartisan panel heard testimony for the first time on Auditor General William Holland’s audit of the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative. Holland called it a “hastily implemented” election-year program that had scant oversight over how millions of state grant dollars were spent and little to no effect on curbing street violence.

“There is a failure in the planning, implementation and management throughout this entire program,” Holland told the commission.

Even Democrats on the bipartisan panel joined Holland in condemning the Quinn program.

“There isn’t anybody on this commission that doesn’t agree with the auditor general that this program during its entire existence…had a myriad of problems that cost taxpayer dollars [and] did not do what it was supposed to do in communities,” said Rep. Frank Mautino, D-Spring Valley, the co-chair of the audit commission.

Second, we're going to have a very tight race for governor here in Illinois this year.  

Third, money.  Governor Quinn's opponent, Bruce Rauner, is a Scott Walker Republican with a virtually unlimited war-chest.  Everyone is figuring this will be the most expensive governor's race in the state's history, so between now and November, the voters of Illinois can expect to hear about $50M dollar's worth of fiery condemnations of Pat Quinn and the failure of the NRI.

Since Chicago doesn't have anything like what the rest of the world would consider competitive elections, traditionally City programs that started with a bang and ended with a miserable whimper and taxpayers getting screwed have had virtually no effect on which party runs the place or who gets to sit in the Big Chair up on the 5th floor of City Hall (yes, there are a few exceptions.)

However, once you move out of Daleyville, the perceived success or failure of key policy initiatives can sometimes actually affect the outcome of an election.

And well it should.  

The Clout Club Never Dies

Anyone surprised by this needs to hike up their Underoos and get back to playing with Tinkertoys:

Report: Rahm Emanuel aides coordinated with 'Chicagoland'

By HADAS GOLD | 4/25/14 10:49 AM EDT

Aides to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel coordinated scenes with the producers of the CNN series "Chicagoland," emails obtained by the Chicago Tribune show.

More than 700 emails show that the production team, led by executive producer Marc Levin, worked with the mayor's team to develop storylines, arrange specific scenes and review news releases for what was billed as an unscripted documentary series.

In one email asking for more access to Emanuel, Levin wrote they were seeking more time with the mayor not to show his weaknesses "but instead to show the best of who he is and what he is doing."

"I know we still have time to round out the Mayor's story and present him as the star he really is," Levin wrote.

...

By request, I watched the first 1.2 episodes of this series. I even made a buncha notes just in case I was ever inspired to write about it.

I never was.

In Chicago politics, the Press is the Enemy, and to rule Chicago a mayor must know how to subdue an Enemy.  I refer you to Lesson Six of the Ten Lessons of Rahmses:

Enemies:

Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and the fuckin' consultants jammed face-first right in your crotch every fuckin' minute or they'll bleed you dry.

Also stab anyone who looks at you funny in the fuckin' neck with a fuckin' pencil.

Except for fuckin' Mike Madigan; that bastid's got a neck stabbin' pencil of his own that reaches all the way to Chicago.

Gotta respect that.

Also Lesson Two:

Being Da Boss:

Obey? Moses, Moses, are you fuckin' kidding me?

Bring me a fuckin' pencil so I can fuckin' stab you in the fuckin' neck.

Then say "Thank you, Boss!"

Even though I am a "Chicago writer" of some minor stature, and even though I have written extensively about the grubby, on-the-ground operating realities of Chicago and Illinois politics as they look from inside the Clout Fortress, I was never moved to write anything about "Chicagoland" because from camera placement, to the way each scene was edited, to the way the stories of the main characters were slanted it was painfully obvious to me that it was crafted to be mayoral campaign fodder every bit as much as this much shorter video about a Chicago mayor dealing with schools and gangs and crime:

The Clout Club Never Dies

This from Tuesday's Chicago Sun Times jumped off the page, because during one of the few part-time/short-term/no-benefits gigs I have managed to pick up since 2009, I caught a corner of this program for my then-employer:

Hard to give governor’s 2010 anti-crime program the benefit of the doubt

EDITORIALS March 11, 2014 7:24PM

When a government program is botched from the outset, everything about it becomes suspect.

If money from the program flows to an elected official’s husband, you have to wonder — even more than you might usually wonder.

If a teen hired by the program gets caught up in a murder rap, you can’t help but wonder why that teen was ever hired.

When a government program is poorly executed at the outset, as was an anti-crime program set up by Gov. Pat Quinn, the benefit of the doubt fades fast.

In August 2010, just before a tough election that pitted Quinn against Republican state Sen. Bill Brady, the governor announced the launching of an ambitious anti-violence effort. He was responding to a very real problem — that was one bloody summer in Chicago — but the $55 million Neighborhood Recovery Initiative program his administration quickly launched in October 2010 was rife with problems, according to a scathing audit released late last month by the state’s auditor general.

The auditor called it “hastily implemented” and cited “pervasive deficiencies” in “planning, implementation and management.” Researchers evaluating the program weren’t even asked to gauge whether it had any impact.

...

From top to bottom, the problem with the NRI wasn't just that the program was a goddamn mess.

It was -- like many an IT project I slogged through back in the days of old -- depressingly clear from a mile away that it was wired to be a goddamn mess from the start.  The people at the top appeared to be sincere, but had no idea what they were doing.  The cost-controls were zilch.  The project plan was "throw a buncha stuff at it and hope it works out".  There were dozens of complex moving parts, all on different schedules, all run by different people, none of whom appeared to be talking to each other on a regular basis.  Staffing was a nightmare, with everything sub-sub-contracted out as far as possible to spread the money around.

And money was the thing.  

Money and deadlines.

Thanks to the the Great Recession, by 2010 social service organizations of all kinds had been decimated by massive, muscle-and-bone cuts to at all levels. and it was into that resource-starved environment that this a brand-new $55M grant arrived.

Ermahgerd!

New Money!

And deadlines. No concise objectives or well-defined outcomes, but lots and lots of deadlines each of which came with severe penalties.

So here's a pro tip for you kids out there:  When a project combines 1) no clear plan and no overall leader, 2) a high public profile and 3) lots of drop-dead dates...run for the exit as soon as you can plan your escape because

• The thing is doomed.  Doooomed I say.  And
• As sure as God made John Wesley Dean III, the first thing that will happen after the Big Project fails due to incompetent management is that management will go looking for scapegoats among the rank-and-file. And when that happens, you would do well to remember the wise words of Amarillo Slim: "If you’re at a poker table and you don’t see a sucker, it’s you.”

The organization that hired me on as a contract/temp had been hemorrhaging middle-managers for years and so when I arrived they literally had no one else to throw at their portion of this mess, so into the thresher I went as a placeholder until they could hire someone on to take up the task permanently.

Unfortunately their internal hiring procedures were so staggeringly complex and awful -- so completely set up to make sure virtually no one ever got hired as a full-timer -- that I ended up getting stuck with the job.  And right out of the gate, what was supposed to be a 3-day orientation to get all the dozens (hundreds?) of people who had been (often involuntarily) committed to the enterprise suddenly ballooned into (as I recall) nearly two months of full-time, all-day...stuff.

Wheee!

Just...stuff.  It appeared that the people running the thing had just pulled random proposals and white papers that had been gather dust on their shelves for years and tossed them into a pile and, bingo, that was the program.  So for two months we had seminars -- many of them very interesting -- on everything anyone could think of.  

After which the organization for which I worked lost its portion of grant because, in that intervening two months, no one had managed to win the Human Resources Hunger Games and actually get hired to do the job for which I had been seat-filling.  For awhile after that happened it was clear I was being suited up by the company to take the hit for losing them their share of the cursed money from this doomed program, but at this point in my life I know enough to cross every "t", dot every "i", and to document the Hell out of everything.

But eventually my contract ran out, and the people who ran the Human Resources Hunger Games explained to me that, despite the fact that everyone I worked at this shop was begging them to hire me (because I happen to be really good at what I do), it was just impossible because, um, er, uh....

This was not the first well-intentioned project designed to help genuinely needy people which I have seen ruined because it's planning and execution were handed over to political friends instead of competent professionals.  

And it probably will not be the last.

You want to know how to corrode people's faith in government to the point where they finally throw up their hands and say "Fuck it!  Just let the private sector run everything!"?  

This is how you do it.

The Clout's In The Cradle

"He`s just dumb as a rock. If his name were Richard M. Camper, he`d be working in the post office."

-- Rob Warden, editor of Chicago Lawyer,

writing about Hizzoner Richard M Daley in 1989 (?)

Anyone who has spent more than airport layover time in Chicago knows that politics, power and privileged in my former home are dynastic.  As you or I might leave a stamp collection or our car to the kids, in the Daley family, clout is bequeathed.  Same with the Jackson family.  And the Mells.  And the Madigans.  And the Strogers,  And the so forths.  And the so ons.  

Of course, like any other kind of inherited wealth, the blood tends to run thin by the third generation. (or, to quote Jack Donaghy) --

We are an immigrant nation! The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things, the next generation goes to college and innovates new ideas, the third generation... snowboards and takes improv classes.

-- but to this day, if you crack open a copy of Mike Royko's indispensable "Boss" you will be amazed at how little the last names of the key players have changed.

Chicago is so proficient at the art of clout that we had an Alderman -- Isaac Carothers Jr. -- who was convicted and did a two year bit for virtually the same crime his father -- Isaac Carothers Sr. -- committed when he was an Alderman. When last seen, former-alderman and ex-offender Isaac the Younger was... wait for it... kicking around the idea of running for a seat on the Cook County board!

Back before I figured out that almost no one was interested in the subject, I used to write a lot about this particular aspect of Chicago/Illinois politics.

Hell, I used to write song parodies about it:

And so, with apologies to Harry Chapin...

3...2..1...

Rat's In The Boodle

A child arrived just the other day,

Not on the clout list, but dat's ok,

But there were plans to hatch and bribes to pay,

He learned to cheat while I was away

He was scamming 'fore I knew it and as he grew

He'd say "I'm going to be like you Dad,

An Al-der-man just like you."

Chorus :

Another rat's in the boodle,

Just like Silver Shovel

Nobody'd believe dis shit

If you put it in a novel,

"When you gonna run son?" "I don't know when."

"We'll get together then,

We'll get you on da clout list then."

My son turned ten just the other night

Showed him how to rig a vote up good 'n tight.

Will you teach me good and bad?

I said, "Not today,

I got thumbs to bend." He said, "Dat's OK."

And he walked away, but his smile never dimmed

Said, "I'm going to be like him, yeah.

An Al-der-man just like him."

Chorus :

Another rat's in the boodle,

Just like Silver Shovel

Nobody'd believe dis shit

If you put it in a novel,

"When you gonna run son?" "I don't know when."

"We'll get together then,

We'll get you on da clout list then."

He got into office just the other day,

Another Daley-man, and I just had to say,

"Son, I'm proud of you, now about my bail..."

He shook his head (looks like I stay in jail)

"What I'd really like, dad, is your sucker list.

I'm in need of some ducats dat won't be missed."

Chorus :

Another rat's in the boodle,

Just like Silver Shovel

Nobody'd believe dis shit

If you put it in a novel,

"When you gonna run son?" "I don't know when."

"We'll get together then,

We'll get you on da clout list then."

I've since made parole, but now my son's been popped

I called him up to see how he copped

"I'd like to see you, if you don't mind."

He said, "Don't say nuthin weird 'cause they bugged this line.

Let's just say my new "job's" a hassle and da "kids" have da "flu"

But it's sure nice talking you Dad, it's been real nice talking to you."

And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me

He'd grown up just like me,

An Al-der-man just like me.

Chorus :

Another rat's in the boodle,

Just like Silver Shovel

Nobody'd believe dis shit

If you put it in a novel,

"When you gonna run son?" "I don't know when."

"We'll get together then,

We'll get you on da clout list then."

So, as longtime readers know, I am a great believer that Clout, in all of its many mutations and variations, rules our world.  And when you've worked long enough within whispering distance of its global headquarters you get so you expect to see it everywhere you look, and you are rarely disappointed. So imagine my complete lack of surprise at seeing this in The Daily Beast:

Get Elected, Get Your Kids Rich: Washington Is Spoiled Rotten

A governor’s daughter is made CEO without a MBA. A senator’s son starts a hedge fund right out of college. Democrats have joined Republicans in the new nepotism.

Joe Manchin’s daughter Heather was looking for a job. The now-senator and one-time governor of West Virginia was only a state level rep when he ran into Milan Pushkar—the head of Mylan Inc., a Fortune 500 pharmaceuticals company—at a West Virginia University basketball game [1]. Heather was hired for an entry-level position at the company soon after. Records show Mylan benefitted from millions of dollars worth of corporate tax breaks in the state during Manchin’s gubernatorial tenure. [2] And these days, after stints as Mylan’s director of government relations and strategic development, Heather Bresch (née Manchin) is the company’s CEO, one of Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business [3]. All this without even an MBA—a 2008 investigation found that Bresch did not actually earn her degree from WVU as claimed. Officials had altered her official records and covered up for it, perhaps motivated by Mylan’s lucrative relationship with the University—co-founder Pushkar (Bresch’s business world fairy godfather) donated over $20 million [4] and had the football field named after him. [5]

Connected children of political families catching a break is something we Americans are plenty used to—there would be no Kennedy or Bush dynasties without the public’s acceptance that some people just raise their kids up all square-jawed and rolled shirtsleeves, ready to run for office. But the nexus of private business and politics is always one that’s skated over lightly in high school civics classes. Perhaps that’s why there was so much consternation over the recent revelations that Wall Street banks had hired the children of prominent Chinese politicians with hopes of currying favor with those who wield power over business decisions in the rising economic superpower. The hiring of so-called “Chinese Princelings” has been a widespread one in the banking community; JPMorgan Chase had a “Sons and Daughters” program [6] that separated applications of Chinese elites’ children from the wider pool and held them to less rigorous standards. Documents have been uncovered indicating that the bank directly tracked the hiring of influencers’ children to the success of business deals.

...

OK, two corrections.

First, what in the name of Whispering Vic Reyes do you mean, "Democrats have joined Republicans in the new nepotism."  Democrats, especially big city party bosses, pioneered modern political nepotism and cronyism.  Historically this was part of the bargain the Democratic Party struck with its largely-working-class voters (and even many of its would-be reformers): the Party was given enormous political power that would otherwise have be wielded almost exclusivity by and for established monies interests and, in exchange, the hoi polloi got decent jobs, some material improvements to their communities and better opportunities for their kids.  Richard J. Daley was explicit about why, despite its obvious corruptions and often-overt racism, he was 100% loyal to the Democratic Party: because it was the only party that would have let someone like Richard J. Daley join and rise to a position of influence (can't find the exact quote I was looking for at this time.)  Sayeth Richard the First:

The Democratic Party is the party that opened its arms. We opened them to every nationality, every creed. We opened them to the immigrants. The Democratic Party is the party of the people.

This was something up with which the average voter is usually willing to put...right up until the rich dauphins of inherited privilege start yapping about "merit", sneering at our threadbare social safety net as a hammock for moochers, and lecturing the Great Unwashed on the subject of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps.  Once that starts happening, it's time for the pitchforks and torches.

Second, seriously, how in the name of Victoria Davey "Tori" Spelling could anyone write an entire article about nepotism in politics and the media without mentioning the amazing career of Young Luke Russert?  That's like "Moby Dick" without the whale.

Wireless Perversity In Chicago, Redux

In this big world full of God particles and billionaire robots running for President, there are a handful of things about which I can fairly consider myself an expert, and for reasons that are far too weird to go into at the moment, the sordid history of municipal wireless in Chicago is one of those things.

And while my rooting interest in the outcome of that effort cooled years ago, my fascination with the wild, tortured tale of the initiative itself remains, mostly because it is one helluva good story -- a perfect parable of those two, competing forces locked in eternal war at the heart of big city government:  politics-driven Clout and public-service-driven Technocracy.

Three years ago I wrote a very long post (reproduced in its entirely below) on why municipal wireless in Chicago kept being proposed and kept failing, going all the way back to pre-wifi  February, 1999 when Da Mare had proposed fixing all the same problems with fiber optics --

"I envision the entire City residents, businesses, and institutions using this network to access on-line education programs, video-on-demand services, telecommuting and on-line community organizing," - Mayor Richard Daley, February 8, 1999.

-- and in which I noted:

According to his internal political clock (which seems to be synced to the gestation periods of certain types of scorpions for some mysterious reason), about every 18 months or so Da Mare suddenly notices that it has been about 18 months since the ungrateful bastards in the local media have sufficiently praised him for his brilliant technological acumen, at which point he announces that he is going to solve the local "digital divide" problem by throwing pennies at it.

So guess what Da New Mare has proposed?

From The Guardian UK:

Chicago to get hyper-connected under Rahm Emanuel's grand Wi-Fi plan
Emanuel plans to make entire downtown area wireless – the latest in a series of innovations from Chicago's ambitious mayor

Rahm Emanuel, the hyperactive mayor of Chicago, is drawing up plans that would transform the city into one of the most wired urban centres in the world and affirm its status as the broadband backbone of America.

Emanuel has instructed officials to examine the technical and financial implications of turning the whole of downtown Chicago into a wireless network zone. Under the plans, the city's traffic and street lights would be turned into smart polls, ensuring unbroken internet access throughout the city centre that would be extended underground across the entire CTA subway system.

Combined with the already existing connectivity of Chicago's two great electronic trading exchanges – the Mercantile Exchange and Board of Options – the audacious plans would give Chicago, Emanuel believes, a huge strategic advantage. "We are the broadband backbone of America, right here. That's a physical fact, and I have to use that advantage to its maximum capacity, both in the city and in terms of connectivity with the rest of the world.
...

Sigh.

First, "downtown Chicago" doesn't need a damn wireless data network.  The neighborhoods do, and providing free, high-speed internet access to the City's least-served populations in its least served neighborhoods was always the social rationale for trying to do this big, complicated thing in the first place.

Second, back when Chicago first started making noises about doing municipal wireless, the City had money.   Today, the City is broke-broke-dead-ass-broketty-broke.  So don't hold your breath.

Third, while "Government Technology" reports, correctly that this "...wouldn't be the first time Chicago has pursued a municipal wireless network" the same article is incorrect in stating that the enterprise failed  because "the economics of such vendor-built networks didn’t add up".  

The City's multiple efforts to provide its citizen with ubiquitous, public internet access each failed because while Da Mare loved giving Big, Idea Speeches about our Bright Digital Future, he was never particularly interested in properly staffing or funding most of those Big Ideas.  And so, in the absence of real, committed, pragmatic Technocratic leadership with real budgets and the power to make real decisions, time after time the vacuum created by Hizzoner's fleeting, fickle interests were filled from the ranks of the coterie of Clouted flatterers and hucksters who made up much of Daley's royal court.  

Which, three years later, I still think makes for a fascinating story.  

From me in 2009

Wireless Perversity In Chicago *


The Power and the Glory

According to his internal political clock (which seems to be synced to the gestation periods of certain types of scorpions for some mysterious reason), about every 18 months or so Da Mare suddenly notices that it has been about 18 months since the ungrateful bastards in the local media have sufficiently praised him for his brilliant technological acumen, at which point he announces that he is going to solve the local "digital divide" problem by throwing pennies at it.

Looks like our 18 months is just about up (from the the Sun Times):

...
The final technology initiative is Daley's plan to bridge the "digital divide" two years after pulling the plug on an $18.5 million wireless Internet access system that would have reached into Chicago's poorest communities.

It calls for four impoverished neighborhoods -- Englewood, Auburn Gresham, Chicago Lawn and Pilsen -- to be declared "digital excellence demonstration communities" that will be flooded with technology to demonstrate the Internet's "transformative power."

Microsoft has agreed to donate $1.1 million worth of software to help 28 non-profit organizations in those neighborhoods. Another $2 million from Microsoft, the MacArthur Foundation, the Local Initiatives Support Corp. and the state will help bring Internet access to schools and public spaces.

Let me be clear: I believe the provision of basic high-speed internet access (and assistance with the wherewithal to use it) is exactly the sort of service a modern municipal government should provide -- especially to its most criminally neglected communities. However, I also know that anyone who has followed the Clown Car Fire and Boat Drill antics of the Daley Administration over the years as it has boldly made -- and then broken -- this same promise would be wise to approach this latest Civicnet Vaporware release party with whatcha might call Olympian levels of incredulity.

For those of you who haven't followed the hilariously fucked-up saga of Wireless Perversity In Chicago, here's a little history to catch you up.

Once upon a time...

February, 1999:

The Chicago Civic Network Project, will create a network providing high-speed telecommunications to every residence, business, and institution in the City.


"I envision the entire City residents, businesses, and institutions using this network to access on-line education programs, video-on-demand services, telecommuting and on-line community organizing," - Mayor Richard Daley, February 8, 1999.

That was CivicNet, which was to be one of those Miracles of Unleashed Private Sector Awesomeness --

When Chicago Mayor Richard Daley two years ago announced a project to build a metropolitan-area network (MAN) called CivicNet, he stressed that Chicago didn't want to get into the telecommunications business. Instead, from the start, Daley wanted to have vendors in the private sector take the lead in building and managing the network.

But Daley knew that for equipment vendors, service providers and project engineering firms to step up to the plate, the city would have to offer something in return. So as part of the deal, Chicago is offering to be the anchor tenant on the network -- a major incentive for private companies because the city spends more than $30 million per year on network and telecommunications services.

-- which so completely ensorcells Da Mare even though he has never actually worked a day in his adult life at anything but a Gummint Job.

Fortunately, Da Mare's brother Bill has plenty of gritty, real-world private sector experience that Hizzoner can lean on if he needs to.

Experience like, say, running a telecommunications company.

In fact, consider what a superwonderful coincidence it was that Da Mare happened to decide that giving away a $30 million municipal telecommunications monopoly was very best way to help the poor, internet-deprived people of Chicago at exactly the same time his brother Bill became the President of SBC? And just at the precise moment that SBC happened to be desperately trying to claw its way out of a hole and into the high-speed internet market.

An Old Politician Moves to the Boardroom
By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: Monday, November 19, 2001

William M. Daley, the campaign chairman of Al Gore's unsuccessful presidential bid, has decided to move down to what was once enemy territory, Texas, to become president of SBC Communications.
...

Mr. Daley's selection comes as SBC is fighting on several financial and regulatory fronts to enter new long-distance and high-speed Internet markets and return to a period of greater profitability.

As many of its customers sought to cope with their own economic troubles by cutting back on telecommunications services, SBC reported last month that its third-quarter profit fell 30 percent and that it would eliminate thousands of jobs. The company also cut back on a $6 billion project, known as Pronto, intended to make fast Web access available to 77 million people by the end of the year.
...

I mean, how incredibly lucky can one city be?

Anyway, for awhile, as long as no one looked too closely at what was actually being accomplished, CivicNet could generate the requisite glowing, tounge-kiss headlines for Da Mare (May, 2001):

CivicNet is recognized nationally as one of the most innovative approaches to broadband infrastructure and addressing the digital divide. It was cited in the May issue of Wired magazine as a unique way in which government is using its purchasing power to bring high bandwidth to the city as a whole.

And kick off the usual round of overheated speculations about how rich we were all gonna get by way of Hizzoner's wise, and virtually risk-free investment:

CivicNet may boost property values and redevelopment projects?

by Tom LaPorte | June 17, 2002
i-Street Magazine

Even though the city is still months away from awarding the CivicNet contracts, some leaders of the effort are already looking around the next curve on the information superhighway. CivicNet may change more than the speed of neighborhood data connections. It may have an impact on everything from property values to the alignment of suburbs.

CivicNet, of course, is the City of Chicago's strategy for bringing high-speed Internet connections to all the city's neighborhoods. By "bundling" demand across all government agencies, a single provider gets a big contract for voice
and data services. Fast connections are installed in schools, libraries and other government buildings. The result is a wired city.

Scott Goldstein, [vice president for policy and planning for the Metropolitan Planning Council]...also suggested that CivicNet in the city's neighborhoods could hold a key to redevelopment of business districts. Many neighborhoods lost retail trade to regional shopping malls and Walmart-type discount stores. But if a CivicNet strategy results in high-speed connectivity in an older business district, there could be a return migration by businesses needing or wanting high-speed access. In the same way that businesses locate near concrete highways and sources of water, they now will have to consider proximity to a network hub as a factor in their choice of locations.
...

Oh boy! I like money!

It then limped along for a little while (from March, 2004, with emphasis added):

Portions of the network could be built with local government fiber already deployed along roads and Chicago Transit Authority lines. Unfortunately, to the frustration of local business and civic leaders, the city has done very little with the project since its' conception in the late 1990s.

and eventually vanished

Kinks in plan to wire city for speed; Economy, timing strand CivicNet.(News)

Byline: JULIE JOHNSSON

A city-sponsored proposal to lace Chicago with fiber optic lines from 138th to Howard streets is stalled and appears unlikely to be revived.

The telecommunications crash, politics and a city budget crunch have combined to mothball CivicNet, a project that was supposed to put broadband within reach of every business and home in Chicago.
...

without a trace.

There were no survivors, and no one was ever rude enough to mention above a whisper that Da Mare's Big Internet Plan had turned out to be mostly boondoggle, double-talk, and political moonshine.

Then, a few years later...

March, 2006. (emphasis added)

"After serving the post of Chicago CIO for six years, Chris O’Brien felt it was his time to move on. Hardik Bhatt, who officially succeeded O’Brien on March 13, said in an interview with ePrairie that he sees a fully Wi-Fied Windy City in 2007.

“We don’t have to be the first city,” Bhatt said about the vision of Chicagoans being able to walk a laptop from Starbucks to their laundromat and to their home without disconnecting from the high-speed Web. “We just have to get there. I see the city being fully interconnected sometime next year.”

Yay! I still like money!


June, 2006

Chicago Takes Bids for Citywide Wi-Fi Service

In an effort to bridge the “digital divide,” the City of Chicago is moving forward with plans to offer Internet access to all residents. On May 30, Mayor Richard Daley announced a request for proposals from vendors competing for a 10-year contract to provide wireless Internet access throughout the city.

Wi-Fi - short for Wireless Fidelity - enables mobile communications devices, like laptops and personal digital assistants (PDAs), to connect to the Internet without the use of any wires or cables. A citywide wi-fi system would allow residents to have online access from virtually anywhere in the city.

June, 2007 (Video from the "City That NetWorks" summit, at which the Dukes and Duchesses of the Great City wished real hard and clapped reeeeeal loud, so that Broadband Tinklerbell would live again! I do believe in fairies!! I do! I do!)

However, Eight Weeks Later...

Chicago scraps plans for citywide Wi-Fi
Officials say it's too costly and too few residents would use it

CHICAGO - An ambitious plan to blanket the city with wireless broadband Internet will be shelved because it is too costly and too few residents would use it, Chicago officials said Tuesday.

"We realized — after much consideration — that we needed to reevaluate our approach to provide universal and affordable access to high speed Internet as part of the city's broader digital inclusion efforts," Chicago's chief information officer, Hardik Bhatt, said in a statement.
...

So how could someone go from promising the world to delivering nothing and still keep their job?

One might speculate that very, very lavish flattery might have helped:

...
In working with Daley, Bhatt asserts that the mayor bleeds technology. He added: 'In a 15-minute meeting, he always gives me five or 10 points I didn't even think about. He understands very quickly and gives me a good direction. He's on top of a list of all the visionaries I've worked with at Oracle and anywhere.'

Then, a few years later...

July, 2009

Mayor Richard M. Daley today announced new initiatives to help close the “digital divide” in Chicago neighborhoods, guided by a city-commissioned study that says that 25 per cent of Chicagoans are completely offline and that another 15 percent have limited internet access.

“The study tells us that the magnitude of the digital divide separating low-income Chicago neighborhoods is comparable to the rural-urban divide in broadband use,” Daley said in a news conference held at The Resurrection Project, 1814 S. Paulina St.

“If we want to improve the quality of life for everyone, we must work to make sure that every resident and business has access to 21st century technology in their own neighborhoods and homes,” the Mayor said.
...

Yay! Money! And so forth!


Which brings us pretty much up-to-date, except for one little-known fact: that Da Mare's people had a virtually identical proposal for a small, well-reasoned pilot program in their hands five years ago (Full disclosure; I am acquainted with some of the people who contributed to the proposal. They are, to put it mildly, a trifle cranky.) It was designed to do almost exactly what this latest plan is supposed to do: technologically uplift a specific, geographic region, then carefully test and measure the efficacy of providing near-universal high-speed internet access to that area.

It was summarily rejected not because of the price tag, but because it wasn't splashy and spectacular enough. Because it was wouldn't guarantee complete, wall-to-wall coverage of the entire city in one year and at virtually no cost.

In other words, because it didn't promise a big, steaming heap of technological magic and economic voodoo with political miracles sprinkled on top.

And because, as is all too often the case, Da Mare's people were far more interested in headline-generating gimmicks than in real solutions, in the end they went with the nice man who promised them they could have the city "fully interconnected sometime next year”, while the other other plan was sent off to rot on some forgotten library shelf.

Another of the great mysteries about this strange tale is the behavior of Da Mare's people at this critical juncture: that rather than being righteously indignant at being led down the primrose path by someone whose resume would indicate that they damn well should have known better, they instead very generously decided to let that nice man keep his new job and politely ignore the fact that the very lavish promise he made in order to secure that job was yet another cocktail of boondoggle, double-talk, and political moonshine.

Weird, isn't it?

Of course, all Chicagoans of good will should wish City Hall godspeed and good luck with this latest iteration of the Neverending Project, because:

1. This is simply too important to fuck up again, and
2. They are the only game in town.

However if past performance is any indicator of future outcomes, anyone who has watched the last 10 years of promises, excuses, failure, rinse and repeat should now be permanently locked into "Trust, But Verify" mode.

Because the one, clear lesson lesson which can be drawn from the last 10 years is, sadly, pretty simple: If you want to get ahead in City Gummint, when Hizzoner has one of his Special Mayor Moments and suddenly announces that the City's grave financial and structural problems can be fixed by, say, selling all of its parking meters to corporate grifters...

...or blowing hundreds of millions of dollars to sponsor a three-week sports extravaganza seven years from now...

...or, WTF, maybe inducing city pigeons into pooping out 100,000 tiny ingots of gold...

...rather than being one of those annoying, dour, “reality based” buzz-killers and pointing out that his visionary pigeon plan might not be 100% biologically viable, instead reach deeeep into the biggest sack of horseshit you can find and say, with absolute sincerity;

“You know, Mr. Mayor, I sincerely believe wit all my heart dat doze pigeons could shit 200,000 ingots of gold – and piss liquid platinum – if only da right person were to be, y'know, put in charge of managing your brilliant vision.

"On behalf of all da poor children.

"An' hardworkin' mudders.

"An' old people.

"Of da Great City of Chicago.

"Dat we all love so much."

Or, as Evilene eloquently explained 30 years ago in “The Wiz”, if you want to succeed in the viper pit of City Hall office politics, the one thing you never, ever want to do is bring Hizzoner no bad news:

“Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News”

When I wake up in the afternoon
Which it pleases me to do
Don't nobody bring me no bad news
'Cause I wake up already negative
And I've wired up my fuse
So don't nobody bring me no bad news

If we're going to be buddies
Better bone up on the rules
'Cause don't nobody bring me no bad news
You can be my best of friends
As opposed to payin' dues
But don't nobody bring me no bad news

No bad news
No bad news
Don't you ever bring me no bad news
'Cause I'll make you an offer, child
That you cannot refuse
So don't nobody bring me no bad news

When you're talking to me
Don't be cryin' the blues
'Cause don't nobody bring me no bad news
You can verbalize and vocalize
But just bring me the clues
But don't nobody bring me no bad news

Bring some message in your head
Or in something you can't lose
But don't you ever bring me no bad news
If you're gonna bring me something
Bring me, something I can use
But don't you bring me no bad news

* (Title respectfully pilfered from this early play by David Mamet, and subsequently abused by me)

Corrupt Ex-Governor Postscript

But first, a joke:

A mayor and a city budget director walk into a bar.

The mayor says, "Buy me a drink."

The budget  director shows the mayor a spreadsheet and says, "But the city is broke."

The mayor says, "Buy me a drink or you're fired."

The budget director disappears into the bathroom for a few seconds and returns with a new spreadsheet. 

The budget director says, "I was mistaken. We have three million dollars!"

The mayor says, "Hear that everybody! The drinks are on me!"

You know, I thought this post from last year about the sentencing of Milorad "Rod" R. Blagojevich would probably be my last:

Corrupt Ex-Governor Update: Final Edition

He once thought God made him a Rod to rule over Kings.

Today, not so much.

Today, little Roddy

completes his long, strange journey to the Illinois Governors' Maximum Security Retirement FacilityHouse of Many Doors.

...

But of course I was wrong, because today the judge passed sentence on Blago's Chief-of-Staff-turned-informant, John Harris, and in the arc of Mr. Harris' career there is still some tale to tell.

First, the facts.  From the Chicago Tribune:

Blagojevich's chief of staff gets 10 days in prison 

Defendant gets sympathy from judge, who sentenced ex-governor to 14 years

March 29, 2012|By Annie Sweeney, Chicago Tribune reporter

A former chief of staff for Rod Blagojevich who provided crucial assistance to investigators was sentenced Wednesday to a mere 10 days in prison by a federal judge who reserved his harshest comments instead for the former governor, suggesting he was an impossible boss and pointing out some had even questioned his mental stability.

The sentence for John Harris was in stunning contrast to the crushing 14-year term Blagojevich began serving earlier this month in a federal prison in Colorado. In fact, Blagojevich has already spent more time in prison than Harris will.

During the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge James Zagel took the unusual step of querying Harris about what it was like to work for Blagojevich, quoting from letters sent to the court about how unreasonable Blagojevich could be. The judge also made a reference to suggestions at trial of "some level of mental instability" on Blagojevich's part.

Zagel, who also sentenced Blagojevich, went on to express sympathy for Harris and the "dilemma" he faced with a boss who wouldn't be dissuaded from the plots and schemes to corruptly trade on his office and influence for his own financial benefit.

But in the end, Zagel concluded that Harris shouldn't avoid prison time entirely.

"You were much too close to power, and you had an ability either to stop some of the things (or) report what was going on," the judge said.

After a dramatic pause, Zagel then announced his decision — 10 days in prison, perhaps the shortest prison term ever imposed in a public corruption case in Chicago.
...

Ten days?

There are people doing longer, harder time for smoking a joint.  For holding a joint.  There are people doing longer, harder time for speeding tickets.  Ten days is one third of the time judges here hand out for misdemeanor prostitution which, when you think of it, was basically what John Harris did for Blago:

Woman Jailed In Prostitution Case 

June 4, 2011 1:08 PM

WHEATON, Ill. (STMW) - A Chicago woman has been sentenced to 30 days in DuPage County Jail following her arrest late last year by Naperville police for prostitution.

Christina E. Trotter, 20, remained Friday night in the jail, after having been found guilty of misdemeanor charges of prostitution and driving with a suspended license.

Records on file in DuPage County Circuit Court indicated Trotter was convicted Thursday by Judge Ronald D. Sutter. He sentenced her to jail on the suspended license charge, entered an “unsatisfied judgment” finding on the prostitution count and assessed a total of $500 in court costs, records showed.
...

Ten days?

Hell, has anyone even bothered to cook up prison slang for doing ten days? "Dine and dash"? "Overnight sensation"? "Honeymooner"? "Balloon boy?" "Salahi"?  Shit, by the time your body cavity search is finished there's already a car waiting to whisk you back to hearth and home and (after a little time out of the public eye on some upscale version of the Mel Reynolds Rehab Express) back into the world of clout and cleverness.  And who knows? Maybe with good behavior he can even get that ten shaved down to four.

So why start out a post about the wrist-slapping of Blago's Chief-of-Staff with a joke about city budget gnomes?

Because since the days of Old Man Daley, at City Hall, no skill has been more greatly prized and feared
than mastery of the dark art of municipal budgeting.  Because, to misquote Roy Batty, "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched budget wizards and contract mages pull impossibly large wads of dough out of thin air using Microsoft Excel, quantum singularities and accounting arcanum they don't teach anywhere this side of Hogwarts."

Because you do not rise to the level of City Budget Director and then successfully keep that job in all kinds of weather without knowing exactly how sketchy and corrupt the system is to five significant digits.

Because unless you are a regular reader of this blog, you'll probably never guess what John Harris did before he signed up to be Governor Fucking Golden's enforcer?

From me, in 2008:

Corrupt Governor Update, VI

...
So who is John Harris?

Well, once upon a time in a city far, far away...

Daley names O'Hare man as budget director 

It wasn't long ago that John Harris was in Mayor Daley's doghouse. But a major scandal and the power vacuum created by a wave of early retirements have a way of wiping the slate clean.

Harris, the brains and voice behind Daley's plan for new runways at O'Hare Airport, was chosen Monday to be Chicago's new $135,516-a-year director of budget and management. He succeeds Bill Abolt, who walked the plank for failing to clean up the hired truck mess.

A former intelligence officer and prosecutor who spent eight years in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the U.S. Army, Harris can match Abolt's intellect. But he also has the toughness and political savvy that Abolt may have lacked.

"He don't take no mess. He's a no-nonsense person who will demand that things be done and they will be done," said Ald. William Beavers (7th), chairman of the City Council's Budget Committee.

Harris is a "better candidate for budget director than Bill Abolt was" because he's served time in two of the biggest-spending departments, said a longtime City Hall observer.

"He knows where all the bodies are buried and where the gun is hidden," the source said.
...

Can't really say if he did a good job or a bad job.

Can say, in Illinois politics, there's a club.

And you ain't in it.

Because the judge's entire, deeply-sympathetic rationale for cutting Mr. Harris the lightest sentence in Illinois political corruption history was that Mr. Harris was some sort of babe-in-the-woods, browbeaten by a Meany McMeanington boss into doing naughty things, for which Mr. Harris is very, very sorry (from the Tribune again) --

...
Zagel, who also sentenced Blagojevich, went on to express sympathy for Harris and the "dilemma" he faced with a boss who wouldn't be dissuaded from the plots and schemes to corruptly trade on his office and influence for his own financial benefit.

But in the end, Zagel concluded that Harris shouldn't avoid prison time entirely.

"You were much too close to power, and you had an ability either to stop some of the things (or) report what was going on," the judge said.

After a dramatic pause, Zagel then announced his decision — 10 days in prison, perhaps the shortest prison term ever imposed in a public corruption case in Chicago.
...
Harris, who was Blagojevich's chief of staff for three years, testified that at first he objected to some of Blagojevich's crazier ideas, earning him a reputation in the governor's inner circle as a naysayer and acquiring a nickname from Blagojevich — the "Prince of Darkness."

As time went on, Harris testified, he decided to become Blagojevich's sounding board because the governor was increasingly isolated. "There were only so many arrows I could absorb," he told the first jury.
...

-- which is obviously ridiculous.

And finally (and most importantly) because my friends, just in case you need reminding...

There is still a Club (from the Sun-Times)

... The judge also cited what he described as an “unusual set of character reference letters” for Harris, many from prominent figures in city and state political circles. Zagel said he knew at least 10 of the letter writers personally.

And federal prosecutors only had words of praise for Harris. “He was clearly doing everything he could from Day 1” to help authorities build their case, Assistant U.S. Atty. Carrie Hamilton told Zagel.

Still, Harris admitted that he broke the law in a scheme to help Blagojevich try to parlay his power over the Senate appointment into a lucrative private-sector job.

Although he will forever be associated with Blagojevich, whose administration he joined in 2005, Harris had far deeper roots with former Mayor Richard M. Daley. He was a campaign coordinator in a North Side ward for Daley’s 1995 re-election bid and was city budget director and a high-ranking Aviation and Police Department official. He was best known at City Hall for supervising the dead-of-night dismantling of Meigs Field in 2003.

At least two former Daley administration officials — longtime mayoral aide Patrick Harney and chief financial officer Dana Levenson — attended Wednesday’s sentencing to show support for Harris.
...

And you still ain't in it.

Fundraiser Final Day

OK, now he's just screwing with me.

So the Mustache of Understanding came to my city to talk to my Mare about my subject matter.

Well, well, well.

I stopped by Chicago’s City Hall last week to interview the mayor, Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff. I find “Rahmbo’s” Chicago agenda intriguing because it’s a microcosm of what the whole country will have to do for the next decade...

No, not quite true.

It would be much more accurate to say that Tom Friedman stopped by Chicago (and didn't even drop in to say "hey!") to give Hizzoner 2.0

one of his trademark full-body journalistic massages: a glowing, stenographic report of what an awesome job Rahm is doing...based on Rahm's assessment that Rahm is doing an awesome job.

The first problem is that the title -- "A Progressive in the Age of Austerity" -- would be correct if Mayor Rahm were a Progressive.

He isn't.

Second, I read the article back and forth several times and noticed several sentences like this --

"But politics has stood in the way of their adoption[says Mayor Rahm]. Maybe in the past, we could afford the political path. But we have come to the point where we can’t afford it any longer."

-- and the acronym "C.E.O." used twice.

You know what words I did not find in the article at all?

The word "Machine".

The word "clout".

And the word "Daley".

Which is altogether predictable: when he is not pulling profundities out of his own fundamental Friedman's journalistic style consists almost entirely of passing along the doings and sayings of various C.E.O.'s (and the C.E.O.'s who love them) in hushed tones of giddy awe.

Whatever is happening on the 5th floor of City Hall and whatever gloss a drive-by steno like Friedman wants to put on it, the fact is that below decks thing are a mess.

Rahm's budget is shot because Daley hocked everything he could lay his hands to prop himself up for his final three years in office. This he did with the full support of the Chicago Machine and with the City Council acting as his willing accomplice.

Rahm's line workers are shot because for the last several years those who weren't clout-protected were driven like rented mules to make good on one special Mayoral initiative after another, while random layoffs dropped like bombs all around them.

Rahm is looking down the barrel of a skills shortage --

And, on a bad day, Emanuel notes, he finds himself “staring right into the whites of the eyes of the skills shortage.” His city has thousands of job openings going unfilled, he says: “I had two young C.E.O.’s in the health care software business in the other day, sitting at this table. I asked them: ‘What can I do to help you?’ They said, ‘We have 50 job openings today, and we can’t find people.’ ”

-- because for decades the ossified city college system has been used as the pasture out to which politically-connected friends have been put, and because the departments and agencies which are collectively charged with dealing with workforce issues have been cut and then randomly cut again, reorganized then re-reorganized then re-re-reorganized, split up and then gobbled up into a polyglot mess of a mega-department all while being whiplashed by kaleidoscopically ever-changing policies, priorities, special projects and funding rules that all get re-bid every year or two.

It's no way to run a rodeo, but its sheer arbitrariness and brutality coupled with the ever-present knowledge that the clout-protected guy one office over from yours doesn't have to sweat any of this shit does absolutely guarantee that you will eventually drive even the most nobly-intentioned public servant into permanent defensive crouch and perpetuate a culture where no one dares to risk anything or try anything new because unless you are a part of the inner circle (for whom a soft landing place will always be found no matter how objectively incompetent you may be), in this economy, even a shitty job with eroding benefits and working for a dolt is better than no job at all.

Whatever Mayor Rahm told the credulous Mr. Friedman, Chicago's system of entrenched, monied interests and protected elites -- a system now drained of the dough needed to keep itself running smoothly -- it is a system that permitted Rahm to become its Mayor because it concluded Rahm was best suited to protect it, not dismantle it.

Regular readers know that over these many years I have frequently reported on the ins and outs of Chicago politics , budget games, the ethics shell game, and City Hall culture generally, as well as the labor and workforce situation (and, of course, our corrupt ex-Governors.)

Hell, occasionally I even put it to music

Rat's In The Boodle

A child arrived just the other day,
Not on the clout list, but dat's ok,
But there were plans to hatch and bribes to pay,
He learned to cheat while I was away
He was scamming 'fore I knew it and as he grew
He'd say "I'm going to be like you Dad,
An Al-der-man just like you."

Chorus :
Another rat's in the boodle,
Just like Silver Shovel
Nobody'd believe dis shit
If you put it in a novel,
"When you gonna run son?" "I don't know when."
"We'll get together then,
We'll get you on da clout list then."

My son turned ten just the other night
Showed him how to rig a vote up good 'n tight.
Will you teach me good and bad?
I said, "Not today,
I got thumbs to bend." He said, "Dat's OK."
And he walked away, but his smile never dimmed
Said, "I'm going to be like him, yeah.
An Al-der-man just like him."

Chorus :
Another rat's in the boodle,
Just like Silver Shovel
Nobody'd believe dis shit
If you put it in a novel,
"When you gonna run son?" "I don't know when."
"We'll get together then,
We'll get you on da clout list then."

He got into office just the other day,
Another Daley-man, and I just had to say,
"Son, I'm proud of you, now about my bail..."
He shook his head (looks like I stay in jail)
"What I'd really like, dad, is your sucker list.
I'm in need of some ducats dat won't be missed."

Chorus :
Another rat's in the boodle,
Just like Silver Shovel
Nobody'd believe dis shit
If you put it in a novel,
"When you gonna run son?" "I don't know when."
"We'll get together then,
We'll get you on da clout list then."

I've since made parole, but now my son's been popped
I called him up to see how he copped
"I'd like to see you, if you don't mind."
He said, "Don't say nuthin weird 'cause they bugged this line.
Let's just say my new "job's" a hassle and da "kids" have da "flu"
But it's sure nice talking you Dad, it's been real nice talking to you."
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He'd grown up just like me,
An Al-der-man just like me.

Chorus :
Another rat's in the boodle,
Just like Silver Shovel
Nobody'd believe dis shit
If you put it in a novel,
"When you gonna run son?" "I don't know when."
"We'll get together then,
We'll get you on da clout list then."

And I can tell you with perfect confidence that Tom Friedman's quick snuggle-bunny puff piece on Da New Mare -- which cites only Da New Mare and a couple of C.E.O.'s -- will tell you exactly nothing new or true or important about the actual state of politics or gummint in the City of Chicago.

It will, however, confirm everything you already know about the work habits Thomas L. Friedman.

Fundraiser